(no subject)

I stumbled across one of my brothers in Facebook and friended him. It rather surprised me to find that I'm friends with the grandparents of maybe thirty per cent of his friends. They, of course, don't play with Facebook and don't appear in my flist, so he is yet to find this out.

There's a story in it, somewhere, but I haven't worked it out yet. All I can think of is that if ever we go to a big Jewish wedding somewhere, I shall be in a group two generations older than his group. Also, that I shall get the best gossip.

My day off was spent dealing with idiot medical thingie after idiot medical thingie. My brain wasn't quite working because I pulled two of the big neck muscles, and whenever I treated it I did so in the best possible way to set something else in motion. It was a very funny sequence, to be honest, despite the amount of discomfort that ensued. There's nothing seriously wrong with me, but I need a quiet week to get my body working properly. I also can't use the computer for much at a time, which put paid to the great week of writing scenario. Since I can't be restful again till tomorrow night and I can't do some of the work I had planned, I'm eating much rassam.

The rassam was made in my brand-new second-hand crockpot. A friend found it for me at a stall at a school fete or a church fete or something. She bargained the price down for me and when I got it I thought "This was $10!" Jennifer is wonderful, is all I can say. Crockpots make cooking so much easier on pearshaped days. Making the rassam in it meant that I've actually done my laundry, despite my neck.

What else can I be happy about? Going to the see Iain's play next weekend. Going to Sydney the weekend after.

Which reminds me, Sydneysiders who want to do that history for non-historians class (how to actually get the information you *need* from a specialist who has no idea where you're coming from) might want to book very soon. It's at the NSW Writers' Centre, the weekend after the long weekend.

(no subject)

Totally irrelevantly, when we were talking about perception and body language in one of my classes last week, we looked a bit at what we communicated unintentionally. I've been told several times by adults that I'm intimidating and way more times by children that I'm funny and silly and huggable.

I can't actually sort this one out. I understand where the kids come from, because they explain it by asking for paper cranes and to blow bubbles and play with my screaming chook (it crows when you throw it - Elizabeth Chadwick sent it to me, thus proving she doesn't find me intimidating and also understands fully the functioning of my brain) and scrap paper to write on and by wrapping their arms around me and groaning at my jokes.

I'm baffled by me being intimidating. I did ask the class, but they just laughed at me. All (relatively polite) contributions to my increased understanding gratefully accepted.

PS Saying I 'know stuff' isn't a useful response. I have just as many gaps in my knowledge as anyone else and am only the third most useful person at any given quiz night table. This makes me incapable of being the liberal arts expert in SF, because I don't know 3 dozen languages and am totally insecure in strange historical detail of the political sort. In other words, if the life of the heroes (and indeed, the future of the world) rested on me, we would all be doomed.

I don't care because I know we're all doomed anyway. Someone said last week that a possible solution for racism is people who look like mainstream folks in a given society just not mentioning their differences ever.

PPS Is that enough cat-amongst-pigeons stuff? Can I go rest my poor neck for a bit?